The recent mushrooming of 'Occupy' groups around the world is a hopeful development. Its clear disillusion with Establishment bodies - governments, banks and corportions - and open discussions of possible change is creating an eager audience for alternatives, such as monetary reform, land value and resource taxation, and Citizens Incomes. The breakdown of the present system of power, based on bank-generated debt, at last gives meaningful reform a chance to succeed.
As stated on this website:
"The Green Party aims to create conditions for humankind to live into the indefinite future in harmony with each other and with nature - the natural world on the health of which we all depend for our own health.
"We in the Working Group regard five main issues in economics as essential for this:
1. fair distribution of wealth and access to natural resources, to be achieved by
2. securing for communal benefit, by means of Land Value Taxation, the basic rental value of the land, in its unimproved, natural condition, and
3. the value of natural resources before any work is done on them, to be collected by Resource Taxes, as well as pollution taxes, supplementing regulations restricting pollution, and
4. the reform of the money system, to end the enslavement of humankind by the false debts which are generated by a money supply based on interest-bearing debt, created by the world's private banks as loans of "credit". We need instead to have a permanently circulating, debt-free supply initially spent into existence by governments, and ensuring that what is physically possible and socially and ecologically desirable is made financially possible.
"Given the above, the final requirement is
5. the introduction of generous Citizens' Incomes, to distribute to everyone their fair share of the value of natural resources as collected by 2 and 3 above, and of the "common cultural inheritance" of the infrastructure, knowledge and skills passed down from the efforts of past generations.
The main obstacle to change as advocated above is the 'power complex' of banks, controlling TNCs, controlling governments and the public media. We live in a 'Matrix' of lies and myths supporting these institutions. The prime myth is that we live in a democracy!"
Many of the articles I have included in this and past issues have made sound points about their subjects, but many fail to question the aim of 'the economy'; this should not be to aim for 'job creation' and 'full employment', or for further 'economic growth', but for meeting the real needs of society, with minimal pollution and destruction of natural resources, and maximal release of people from wage-slavery, offering instead, economic security and leisure.
The 'Transition Town" movement is seeking to move in the right direction: to develop local sresilience, based on sharing and community cooperation for moves toward social and ecological sustainability, based on personal sense of responsibility, not just 'rights'. Freedom from wage-slavery is a requirement to further this aim.
We need to spread awareness of the existence of psychopathy, and its dire effects on the unsuspecting majority; well worth a read is George Monbiot's Guardian article published on 8th November, "The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen", which can be read on line at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
May I repeat my request for readers to become, also, contributors of material for me to publish? Comment on news reports in newspapers or other public media, as well as original articles, would be welcome.